


Nothing Good Ever Happens in the Cold

by Nonplayer_Character



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Snowed In, Starts off a little dark but turns cute pretty quickly (second chapter)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-28 14:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13273593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonplayer_Character/pseuds/Nonplayer_Character
Summary: Fareeha is injured during a mission gone awry and she and Angela find themselves discomfortingly off-course and out of touch with Overwatch HQ, hunkered down in a safe house.Separated from the others and caught in a snowstorm, Angela and Fareeha weather some previously-suppressed realizations, what’s left of a group of less-than-hospitable international terrorist and ... the weather.All goes about as expected.





	1. The Safe House

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter is only 700 words, but future chapters will be longer, promise. I just needed the chapter 1 set up. <3

The weather forecaster calls for continued temperature decrease and an increase in snowfall over the next five hours, which is expected to stick and last for days. Ice has frozen the roads so that they are nearly impossible to traverse; reports say there is a two hour backup just to travel a 20 kilometers stretch down the freeway. This state of things will only get worse, and the delays and backups will only get longer. On the radio, static blurs into the low tones of an individual advising the general public to stay indoors until further notice. They are calling it the worst winter storm in recent history.

Whose history it is, Fareeha cannot begin to guess. "They" is an obtuse and meaningless term.

Fareeha squeezes her eyes shut tight and grinds her teeth; hissing sharply as she feels Angela’s fingers dig into the exposed flesh of her abdomen.

The doctor works in the silence between the static broadcast of the radio on a coffee table nearby and the whistling of the wind outside the large picture windows at the far end of the room. Occasionally, the tense atmosphere is cut by a soft clack of metal shrapnel being dropped, with no amount of grace, to the wooden floor below.

“Try not to tense up,” Angela says, her voice soft in the expanse of the sparsely-furnished room, “it will only make the pain worse.”

Angela glances up and catches Fareeha’s eyes for a fraction of a moment before she refocuses. The brief connection is enough; Angela’s expression is wild and uncertain. Desperate. Fareeha wants to comfort her, but cannot think straight. There is nothing that immediately comes to mind which might help the situation.

“Hard to imagine that,” Fareeha settles on, forcing a strained grin. She learns quickly that speaking at all is a mistake when pain flares in her stomach. Unpleasant at first, and then in the moments of respire, almost unbearable.

“If you do not do as I say, you won’t have to imagine.” Angela's voice floats in, distracted. She means to chide, joke, Fareeha knows this, but the doctor’s voice is tight with anxiety or stress, and it comes out all wrong. Neither of them speak anymore. It does not seem like the right time for Fareeha -- she has never seen Angela so out of her depth.

Fareeha is fairly certain that she has experienced worse as far as injuries go. She is not reckless, per se, but Fareeha has spent a large part of her life watching the backs of the people she has loved most in the work, walk into hell, protecting her and those who stood behind them. She is not reckless, but seeing that - seeing that enough time - she has maybe picked up a couple of pointers. (Or, perhaps, bad habits).

She is sure she has experienced worse … it is difficult though, impossible even, to recount how or when or why those previous accounts occurred, in her current state.

Fareeha cannot focus on any one thing; she can only feel Angela working, and the spikes of discomfort as something is moved which ought not to be. (A foreign object, inserted? An organ?) Black spots dot the peripherals of her vision and she is finding it hard to stay focused, to even stay awake. She suspects Angela might intentionally be causing the discomfort, if only to keep her from blacking out.

 _Angela_ , Angela, Angela. Blue. Yellow. Angela. Oh. She is beautiful. 

* * *

 

Angela’s hair is falling haphazardly out of the ponytail it usually is in during missions, strands of blonde frame her face and fall in front of it. She is wearing a black compression shirt, but there are tears across the abdomen and parts of what remain of the sleeves. Most of the material of the sleeves has been sliced off and had, until recently, been stuffed into Fareeha’s wound.

Angela’s forearms are coated, nearly to the elbow, in blood. It is gruesome and red. Even with the latex gloves retrieved from a medical kit now laying beside Fareeha on the tattered suede couch they share, it is a patchwork job and far from ideal.

Angela has worked in sparse conditions before, but always with the knowledge that the materials she would need would be available to her.

* * *

 

Fareeha dazedly thinks “we are out of our element” and, forgetting Angela’s earlier warning, chuckles to herself. For Fareeha, it seems doubly true. She has never particularly cared for the winter.

Nothing good comes with the cold.

Chuckling, even the quiet chuckle of recognized irony, is a mistake. The action leads to a sharp, sharp stabbing feeling which comes quickly and without warning. Fareeha blinks against the sudden onslaught of feeling as Angela hisses “ _scheißen_ ” and grabs for something in the kit beside her. Before she can quite grasp why it is she suddenly feels so light-headed, Fareeha blacks out.

In the moment before unconsciousness hits, the events of the day come rushing back to Fareeha with remarkable clarity. Behind her eyelids, she sees the blades of a helicopter tail rotor, a mishap, or perhaps a calculated failure. Something occurs. One blade flies loose, spinning too fast to be dodged.

Fareeha feels something, thinks the wayward metal must have impacted and then bounced off of her armor, and looks down. Nothing bounced off. Bits of the blade have pierced through the Raptora, and one disconcertingly large piece is lodged in her middle. It hurts ...

 

... and she is falling.


	2. Operating at Max

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let’s all reflect on how long it takes NPC to update. And then let’s never speak of it. *crying*
> 
> Here’s some quiet before the (literal) storm. 
> 
> I’ll try to be quick(er) with the next update!

Fareeha wakes up light-headed, sore, and a bit confused, though ultimately alright. Which is a comfort; she can recall  passing out. (Angela’s not going to be pleased.)

There is a decidedly … medical-looking bag strapped to a planter on her right. The planter is a permanent fixture, hanging on a nail from the rafters above. It has got some long-dead skeleton of a plant, now petrified, draping out of the bucket in a pathetic manner. Fareeha imagines what remains of the plant is the relic of an Overwatch operative who had been stationed here long enough to want to make the place feel like theirs. (Overwatch often worked in that way: missions were predominantly humanitarian projects, then, and an agent could be gone for months, set up in a house exactly like this.) It strikes her as comforting, that whoever had been here before had wanted to breathe life into a sterile pseudo-home.

The hanging bag is plastic, filled with blood, and is not a permanent fixture of this environment in the slightest. Not least of all discernible because the flat-top, vacuum-sealed portion that would generally be hanging from a cold metal stand in a hospital room or clinic is currently strapped to the bottom of the planter with a healthy amount of electrical tape.

Fareeha follows an IV from the bag to where it ends at a vein in her left arm; a needle is taped into her skin and - oh - this is Angela’s work.

Not a second after that thought enters Fareeha’s mind does the woman herself walk in. She is carrying a mug of something steaming and a magazine with a cover for an event that happened years ago. Her hair is down, flowing in the wavy way hair does when it has been dampened while pulled up and is only now beginning to dry out; she is also wearing new clothing.

Flannel pants hang loose around her waist and drag along the hardwood floor (too big for her) and a long-sleeved shirt falls off of her shoulders. Little holes sprinkled across the material tell Fareeha it is either very old and falling apart, or eaten by moths; Angela found these clothes somewhere in the house, no doubt.

Angela looks up from her magazine as she walks into the room, to check on Fareeha; the natural way this action occurs makes Fareeha think that Angela has been doing this for awhile. Hours, even. When she sees Fareeha staring back at her, she stops, watches for just a breath, and then breaks out into a smile.

“I am so happy to see you’re awake,” she says, genuinely, with none of the earlier worry, hazy, that had been so prevalent in her demeanor. She deposits her items on the coffee table beside the radio. Crackling bits of some mellow music, maybe there’s a violin in there - Angela must have changed the station - bleed into the air, but go largely ignored.

Fareeha is still in her ruined flight suit, large parts of it have been cut away to allow for access to her stomach, so it is not particularly good at doing any of the things it was designed for, (keeping her warm, protecting her delicate innards) but she is also covered in a blanket so it isn’t very bad either.

Remembering, Fareeha lifts the blanket briefly to inspect the hole that had once been in her abdomen. It is patchy, deep red, (maroon, almost) and unpleasant looking, but stitched up and frankly in better condition than it has any right to be, given the circumstances. That is the wonder of Angela Ziegler - that she staves off the world and its restrictions with only determination and bright eyes.

“When you next see your mother,” says Angela, “you should thank her.” Fareeha glances back at the doctor; shifting on her couch just a bit, testing the movement.

“Oh?”

“She left some of her nano darts in the medical kit.” Angela says. “Though maybe that was standard practice, when this safe house was last used.”

Fareeha laughs softly. Of course.

“I’ll do that,” Fareeha says, and carefully sits up. (She may not have been so careful otherwise, but Angela’s eyes are sharp on her, intent in their blue, blue, blue, and she is trying not to be much of a bother) “… I owe you a larger thank you, you know, right now.”

“You don’t.” Says Angela. The woman, only a moment ago, so confident, will not meet Fareeha’s eyes, which is frustrating, but she does go to remove the near-empty bag and IV. Angela is efficient in this way. In this frame of mind, things are done, the medical kit is repacked, the bag is set aside - to be disposed of in some more bio-hazard conservative way at a later point. The room is softened without the medical artifacts, invited to be more of a home than an operation room.

Fareeha sits up, aware of the pain and the blood stains on the couch; she rubs her head and fights off the dizziness and the discomfort - it is not new, but it is never something she has gotten used to. Fareeha supposes this is something to be grateful for. She never wants to be complacent in the feeling of standing, hands clasped, on the steps of death’s door.

“I would have died,” Fareeha says. Angela cleans up everything else which can be cleaned and when she finishes, she sits on the floor by the coffee table and wraps her hands around the mug. Her eyes meet Fareeha’s, and they don’t speak. She pats the carpet beside her after awhile; an invitation.

“Please don’t say that,” Angela replies, her offer prevalent.

Fareeha stands, stretches just enough to test the waters, and joins her on the floor. At the moment, she prefers being closer to the ground - it makes the light-headed delirium just slightly more bearable.

To her immense shock, Angela lays her head on Fareeha’s shoulder and only moves to fidget with her mug.

“I am not in the habit of losing,” says Angela, “and would like very much not to think of what might have happened today.”

Fareeha nods, the stray whispers of Angela’s hair tickle her chin pleasantly and Fareeha finds herself recalling a decade ago, before Overwatch, before missions and responsibilities, when the two of them sat together at the same side of a bar, leaned into each other in the dim light and the musk, a year after the assumed death of Ana Amari, a month before Angela’s acceptance into the organization which had claimed her; half-hearted comfort at the end of the world.

How Angela had kissed her on the cheek first, the moment soft like the light around them, like Fareeha’s heart in the give and the get back -- and then the lips. On Fareeha's mouth, the haze of it all; the warmth in Fareeha's chest to this day. How it has all faded away in a drunken daze Fareeha can only half recall and regrets. Not because it happened, but because she wishes the memory had been clearer.

Fareeha blinks and she is back in the present, remembering having never followed up on that night - on the ache in her heart and the nerves in her abdomen.

Now it hurts a bit, but is healing.

“So, Doctor, what is the plan?” Fareeha asks.

“You should try to avoid moving too much,” Angela says, “no squatting, lifting…” Angela glances at her, smiles.

“Noted,” says Fareeha with a chuckle she instantly regrets. “Although I was thinking more in terms of our current … situation.”

They look together out the picture window on the other side of the room and the snow has stopped its flurry, the way it had swirled in an angry frenzy as they fell has subsided into a lazy flutter of fat flakes that look almost peaceful against the white black backdrop of the darkness behind it.

“We wait,” Angela tells her. Fareeha looks at her, skeptical. “I made coco… I’ll go get you some.”


	3. Calm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m embarrassed about how long it takes me to update things and the continued decrease in quality...

“This game makes no sense,” Fareeha grumbles with no real malice, and discards yet another of her cards into the growing pile on her left, next to a forgotten coffee mug. The pile is substantially larger than Angela’s, across from her, and becoming increasingly messy in its exponential growth, cards scattering across the coffee table which is their arena.

Angela, studiously sitting opposite Fareeha and almost certainly analyzing how best to demolish Fareeha’s remaining deck, smiles coyly.  
  
“Perhaps you’re just a sore loser,” she says pleasantly, laying down her next card.

Fareeha watches helplessly as Angela wipes out another of her hastily constructed defenses, and sits in solidarity with her fallen soldiers, contemplating whether she has any hope of winning at this point.

Having seen Angela at her most competitive (field days in the training arena bring out the worst of the best of them, Angela is not exempt), Fareeha is well aware this game will not end quickly, even if Fareeha concedes to defeat.

Angela will take the calculated route: the slow dismantle of all her defensive cards, their low attack power and lack of flexibility make them easy initial targets, followed by the merciless attack on her weaker offensive cards so that Fareeha cannot counter quickly in future round, and finally, the brutal slaying of her high offensive regime, which will be fundamentally useless by that point, without the support of the others.  
  
If it were not such a devastating blow to Fareeha’s previous conception that she is a decent tactical cards player, she might have invested more time in the nagging feeling in her stomach bubbling up something about a genuine and aching affection, in the faces of Angela’s calming confidence. As it is, Fareeha refuses to feel anything other than indignation purely because her pride is more than a little battered.

“I have not lost yet,” Fareeha responds, steeling her resolve, and lays down an attack card. Angela blinks twice, Fareeha cautiously thinks she may have rattled the other woman, and then Angela, betraying nothing, says:  
  
“Oh, but haven’t you?”

Her smile is haunting.

* * *

The radio, whose music has become a fixture in the room throughout the evening, echos faintly around them; the hardwood is cold under Fareeha’s thighs and out the picture window, night has hit hard, so that other than the fat snowflakes floating down, nothing is visible. The warm yellow light from their cabin is the only source of warmth Fareeha feels at this moment, her demise becoming increasingly more imminent.

Angela points to an area affect at play on one of her active cards which eradicates Fareeha’s newest plan and Fareeha, feeling nothing but regret, slumps into the table, her forehead landing on the surface with a dull thunk. How had she missed that?

(For a moment, the shame bubbles into other aspects of her life; missing something so prevalent in the field would have shown poor sense of judgment, would have cost somebody something significant. But then Fareeha breathes, tells herself to laugh, tells herself not everything must be taken so seriously; reminders herself that games are only games, and she does not want to be that person she once was, who could not see beyond the next objective.)

Fareeha’s abdomen twinges painfully against the still-healing wound there as she huffs against the flat surface. This is something she means to hide, but Angela forgoes taunting her to acknowledge the tensing of Fareeha’s shoulders against the discomfort, and so she knows she has failed.

“How are you feeling?” Angela asks, and lays a hand on Fareeha’s bare shoulder. Even in the discomfort of the position and the mostly-fabricated shame of her defeat, Fareeha stays in that position longer than she originally intended. Enjoying the warmth of Angela’s palm against her skin, Fareeha halfheartedly wonders when her feelings had time to grow into this weed of a thing again.  
  
She knows that she has missed a chance (she should have called Angela after that kiss, all those years ago, to see what it meant; she should have asked to see her again...) and laughs in a sort of self-pitied way at herself for the way her once-forgotten affections come back now, in small ways back at base, and more omnipresent here when it is just the two of them, alone in this house. The song from the stereo fades into another and Fareeha gets the sense she should respond before the silence becomes noticeably long.  
  
“I am fine; only processing my defeat,” Fareeha responds and turns her head to grin sheepishly. Angela rolls her eyes in what is less exasperation and more fondness as Fareeha sits back up. Fareeha hazards a small glance at the other woman before focusing once more on her cards, hoping that Angela cannot begin to analyze the deep longing that must be bleeding through her expression.  
  
“Don’t think that you can re-injure yourself to avoid losing this game, Fareeha Amari. I am on to your tricks.”  

“Don’t be so sure that you know me so well, doctor,” Fareeha teases. Running a hand over her stomach absently, she shifts through her cards to see if there is anything redeeming available for her next turn.

* * *

Angela knows that Fareeha does not intend the words to cut, but still there is an odd and uncomfortable pang below her throat a lot like hurt as she watches Fareeha shuffle through her hand.

_How well do they really know one another?_

Angela lays down a card, choosing to be merciful in the wake of Fareeha’s performance, and waits.

As she does so, Angela cannot help but to think that everything feels so natural: playing games together in the evening, drinking coco, joking, and laughing, and being concerned. If it is selfish, then it is selfish, but Angela half hopes the snow holds out long enough for her to revisit a thought she had once upon a time.

Back then, their paths so diverged, it had not been the right time; they’d come from different places and were heading in opposite directions … But now they work towards the same goals; they are a little older, a little more stable … Fareeha had kissed her back once, Angela thinks, watching as Fareeha’s hands dance across her deck and her brows furrow and she looks beautiful. Perhaps she would again, if Angela worked up the nerve to try...

Fareeha’s eyes flicker up to her and Angela blushes as if Fareeha can read her thoughts; she clears her throat.

“You look like you are struggling,” Angela smiles, “Shall I change the radio to something more foreboding? Perhaps we'll get lucky and some station will play _Taps_ for you?”

“Heartless,” says Fareeha, and lays down another card.

Choosing to focus on the game, Angela reigns her thoughts in a bit. Fareeha has made a good move, a move that would have stumped a lesser player, but Angela is not a lesser player. She has plans for her plan’s plan. She --

A door hinge squeals in protest of being opened, somewhere in the house, the metal unprepared for the movement after so many dormant years.

Angela and Fareeha both turn in the direction of the noise, instantly falling silent; the game forgotten.

 _Someone is inside,_ thinks Angela, in tandem with Fareeha as she moves a finger to her lips in a silent show of the same thought.

Fareeha stands slowly, an arm wrapped protectively around her middle. She is in her sports bra, her previous shirt ruined and in the trash, and the one she has planned to wear to bed on the floor, ready for use when the time comes. For the sake of monitoring the healing process, she had chosen to leave it off. Now, it is an acute reminder that Fareeha is in no position for combat.

“Stand behind the door,” Fareeha whispers.

Angela nods, and they split ways. Fareeha inches in a more direct path towards the noise, a door which leads through a utility closet, out into the cold night air. Angela moves to the other side of the room, behind where the door will swing open, and crouches. The music from the radio drifts languid in the distance between them as Fareeha ghosts across the floor, her back against the half-wall of the bar which serves as a participant between the living room and the kitchen. Angela watches Fareeha pick up a disregarded magazine, one she had been reading earlier, and they both wait.

Moments later the door swings open -- in a movement so fluid it is almost terrifying, even when they expect it.

Fareeha, with unmatched reflexes, throws the magazine up towards the intruder’s face, it flutters open and falls sporadically, but it is enough of a distration for Fareeha to move in. She goes low for a tackle and both she and the intruder go down with a conglomeration of grunts.

Angela sees him now, a man dressed in black and red, the trademark of Talon foot soldiers, as he and Fareeha scuffle on the floor. They are surprisingly quiet in their struggle. It only lasts a few seconds until Fareeha is hit in the stomach and recoils, coughing.

Angela finds herself bolting forward then, aware that Fareeha cannot and should not fight; years of training and a recklessness which is the cornerstone of all Overwatch agents, allow her to jump on the man’s back as he goes to take advantage of Fareeha’s incapacitation.

Angela wraps an arm around his neck, confident that his ability to breathe is thwarted, and clings tight. The man claws desperately at her forearms and thrashes against her vice, but it is in vain and soon the man falls forward.

Fareeha coughs up blood.

Concerned, Angela relaxes her grip, just briefly, caught off guard.

It is enough, the man regains consciousness in the small window where oxygen finds its way back to his brain and, showing a surprising force of will, he staggers back to his feet, backpedals quickly, and slams Angela up against the door behind them. The force of the impact causes her to drop her hold; she lets go and rolls to the side. In the window of opportunity afford to him, the man turns tail and bolts out the door he came through.

Fareeha attempts to follow him.

“Do not move!” Angela orders, her gaze icy.

* * *

In the kitchen is their equipment: the broken bits of Angela’s staff, removed portions of the Raptora -- Angela’s pistol. Angela dashed towards these things.

“What are you doing, Angela?” Says Fareeha, standing.

“Just checking; I won’t chase him,” and grabbing the pistol, she follows the man out the door.

* * *

Fareeha, stubborn to her very core, follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this chapter 3 separate times and am still not satisfied. I didn’t edit it all... I just need to finish this story.


	4. Differences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point, if I finish this story it'll be an absolute miracle haha.
> 
> Also, and completely unrelated, I just wanted to shout out Lunari, who is wonderful. (I meant to do it a year ago when I thought I would be posting an update not a year later, but, well, life and all that.) Anyway, if you're looking for good pharmercy content... ;)

The moniker, Mercy, had originally been a joke -- a name given by Jesse McCree while Angela had still been a university student, only visiting the Overwatch Headquarters during her holidays. Angela has not followed up with him on it since becoming friends, but she suspects given where he was in life at the time, even with their amicable relations, the name had been gifted with some amount of malicious intent.   
  
Jesse had been mad at the world back then -- and everyone in it; it would not surprise Angela to learn of the sneer accompanying its first utterance.

Nonetheless, names have power and so do actions; what started as a joke became an inspiration, became an ideal worthy of pursuit, became a promise, became an identity.  
  
Angela, her pistol pointed at the talon foot soldier and capable of firing, does not, and a moment later, she lowers her arm altogether. It is mercy that stills her as he darts into the treeline. Or perhaps it isn’t. They are, after all, very far way from civilization, and he is almost certainly alone.   
  
It will be a long, cold, dark, and dangerous night. She has either spared him or doomed him.   
  
Angela reflects on this as she watches him, her fingers numbing around the grip, and her hair wet with snow. What is right, what is wrong, and who is she to decide? Just a doctor. Just a woman in a place making decisions based on nothing but pure, foolish intuition. Has she saved enough lives to pardon her from however many she has condemned in her naive righteousness?   
  
“Are you okay?” Asks Fareeha. Angela blinks.   
  
Fareeha is leaning against the door frame, a hand wrapped protectively around her middle, and blood at the corners of her mouth. It’s odd and worrying that she would be coughing up blood; doing so indicates damage to internal areas Angela is certain she did not treat.   
  
Angela goes to her, grabbing her chin and moving her face left, then right.   
  
“Are you?” She asks, her eyes meet Fareeha’s in a moment too quiet and too close. “Why are you coughing up blood?”   
  
Fareeha grins, sheepish.   
  
“I am not coughing up blood, I am coughing _out_ blood,” Fareeha tells her. Registering Angela’s concern, she elaborates: “I bit my tongue when I hit the ground.” For good measure, Fareeha sticks out her tongue and Angela sees now that the side of it is bleeding.   
  
Not knowing what emotion to convey, but relieved, Angela withdraws.

“Oh,” she says, lame, and then smiles. “Alright.” Fareeha watches her.

“You did not answer my question… and you did not fire your pistol.” Fareeha says. There is no judgement in her eyes, or in the creases between them, nor is there any confusion. Propped up against the doorframe, Angela might have mistaken her posture for aloofness, in any other scenario.

“I’m fine,” Angela tells her, “just debating the ethical ramifications of killing a retreating enemy.”

Fareeha hums.

“Dubious,” Fareeha tells her. Angela smiles faintly at her light tone, “I have always believed that if you have _any_ doubts about killing an individual, you should not.”

Angela is less sure, she has doubts about killing in general, and she is certain Fareeha, with her very stringent ideals of right and wrong, does not see the world in the same shades of gray that she does. It is not necessarily more right or more wrong, but Fareeha has made it clear that she is a woman upon whom the burden of justice is at once an honor, and those who must be prosecuted and executed for the highest of crimes will be.

Angela, a pacifist until survival, fundamentally disagrees with Fareeha’s approach, but for reasons she has not yet found the words to articulate. She has seen such great atrocities, but is it so wrong to believe in an inherent goodness?

“Your values are admirable,” says Angela and shivers. “Let’s … go back inside.”

* * *

 

They lock the doors.

For good measure, they also stick kitchen chairs under all those leading outside.

Fareeha picks up the magazine she threw and places it on the counter, Angela puts away their cards, her pistol locked but resting at her hip. They are very quiet throughout this and Fareeha hates every moment of it.

Angela settles into the silence, she sits on the kitchen counter, cradling a cup of tea she has since made, and watching the windows for evidence of movement. Fareeha watches her discreetly from the other room, her fingers running over the surface of the coffee table and fiddling with the radio dial and otherwise trying to occupy themselves. Finally:

“Did I say something wrong?” The radio lands on something neither of them pay attention to.

Angela looks to her, an eyebrow raised in confusion.

“Earlier, we were having a good time? But something is different now. Was it me?”  
  
“It wasn’t you,” Angela tells her. “It was Talon. We were attacked, that changes everything.”

To Fareeha, it doesn’t. There will always be dangers, and they will always face them when they occur. But she is desperate to understand.

“Does it?” Fareeha says, she stands and makes her way to Angela, leaning up against the counter. “He is gone now, we’ve prepared for if he returns.”

“How do you do that?” Angela asks.

“Do what?”

“Compartmentalize. When do you process what has happened to you? When do you think about the people that you’ve impacted? Positive, negative? We’ve left that man in the woods to die. Are you not going to think about that?”

Fareeha shakes her head, and sighs.

“I do think about it Angela. I am not a monster, but if I think about every person I’ve left, I cannot focus on the greater good. I … make sacrifices, and I make peace with those decisions.”

Fareeha watches Angela watch her. There’s an anger there Angela is too kind to unbottle, but Fareeha sees it in her eyes. Truthfully, she does not know what to say. She has never felt so far from the other woman than in this moment.

“I understand,” says Angela, though Fareeha doubts the statement. “I think I’m going to go to bed.”

Fareeha watches as Angela hops off the counter; she tugs at her shirt, moves to set her cup in the sink. Fareeha sighs.

“Take the bedroom,” she says, “I will sleep on the couch.”

Angela turns to her. Fareeha gives her a small smile.

“The couch covered in blood?” Angela responds. _Oh._ “We’re adults, we can share a bed.” Fareeha blinks. Angela gives her a very small smile and then Angela walks out of the room.

Fareeha sighs again. She is not stupid. Fareeha understands that Angela does not agree with her approach to war, conflict, violence. Their objectives are so similar, but maybe that is not enough for Angela. Maybe it is not enough to want to make the world a better place without agreeing on the methods.

So Fareeha is trying to see the world through the doctor’s eyes: the shades of gray around the blacks and whites of crime and punishment. It is hard to imagine finding empathy for the Talon soldier who had not an hour and a half ago tried to kill them both, but for Angela, she will at least give it some thought.

* * *

 

_Angela watches the helicopter rotor spiral towards her, too fast to dodge, and braces. Alone in the sky is not something she is accustomed to, usually Fareeha is about, an easy target to jump to when things get dicey, but Fareeha is in the transport aircraft, with the others, waiting for her._

_It had been the objective for her to fly to the aircraft as it took off. It had been the objective for them all to be in the air and retreating now. The helicopter had been unforeseen. Its detonation, unpredictable._

_Angela braces for the impact of a deadly piece of metal that never lands._

_Fareeha is there, in front of her, her helmet removed and only bits of her armor equipped._

_“Are you okay?” She asks, impaled through the abdomen, and falls._

Angela listens to the door to the bedroom open, and then close. She listens to the shuffling of furniture, something is moved in front of the door to barricade. Just in case, probably. Angela listens to Fareeha slide into the bed.

“I’m sorry for earlier," she listens to Fareeha say, softly. "I do feel bad for that man." A pause. Fareeha finds herself a space on the edge of the bed, facing outward, and settles there. “I cannot promise that I will always agree with you or the others, but I do understand. I do not merely want to be an enforcer; I have been that person before, and I will not go back ... but... I hope you will try to understand my perspective, too.”

In the darkness of the room, Angela does not respond, but she does wrap and arm around Fareeha's middle, huddles into her back, and nods in the space between them.

**Author's Note:**

> When I first started reading fanfiction way too long ago, around this time of year tons would usually pop up about the designated pairing getting stuck snowed in in some cabin out in the middle of nowhere. Sharing a bed, talking about life, etc.. I have always loved those stories. I can’t help it. 
> 
> This is my first foray into writing something stealing that trope... but, well, maybe I’ll handle it with all of the grace one might expect of me, which is to say, in the least graceful way possible.


End file.
